Young Design Team from Spain to Create “Das Haus 2020” Bringing Spanish Outlook to Imm Cologne

August 14, 2019  by Jane Chero in Business Strategy, Designer Weekly, Industry   

“Das Haus” is erected at the international furniture and interiors fair imm cologne. It is a design that points the way ahead to how we might live in the future. For seven days in January each year, it’s constructed from scratch, painted and furnished, and visited, discussed and photographed by thousands. The simulated interior in Cologne gives a designer or design team the opportunity to make their own personal statement on contemporary living.

In a wide-ranging variety of styles from minimalist to extravagant, from matter-of-fact to sensuous, the installation blends current trends and products into a finely tuned interior design.

“A project like ‘Das Haus’ gives a designer a unique opportunity to create something that’s totally independent of production and market conditions while simultaneously understanding and rediscovering their designs in terms of how they impact the space,” says MUT, describing the challenge of designing a fully furnished house for the international furniture and interiors fair imm cologne.

“In our design, we want to go one step further and explore the potential architecture and interior design have for opening the space up to the outdoors.” As a result, the architectural dimension of “Das Haus” is particularly significant this time round. “Mediterranean

life is synonymous with outdoor living,” says MUT of the inspiration the team draws from its traditional lifestyle culture. “Our houses have always integrated a little bit of nature into their interiors.”

Founded in 2010 by Alberto Sánchez and Eduardo Villalón, the design studio is one of the most successful teams of the “new wave” in Spanish design. In their native Valencia, a hotspot of Spanish design that’s bolstered by the traditional furniture making and ceramics industries round about, the team creates furniture, carpets, tiles and lamps for the interiors sector, as well as designing hotels and exhibitions. All their work is characterized by a tendency towards simple, soft, circular shapes. Their creations, which have won major accolades such as the Red Dot award, exhibit forms with a vaguely unfamiliar quality or translate a familiar shape into a modern design. Their international clientele includes firms such as Expormim, GAN, Ex.t, Sancal, Preciosa Lighting, Bolia, E interiors, Harmony Inspire, Missana and LZF.

With MUT, “Das Haus” is deliberately remaining within the sphere of European design this time, while simultaneously selecting a decidedly progressive team with a contemporary profile. “MUT isn’t so much a classic design team as the kind of multidisciplinary community of like-minded people that exists in all sorts of constellations nowadays: modern; flexible; and creative. They work in a surprisingly diverse range of fields: they’re product designers; creative directors; graphic designers; interior designers and curators, all rolled into one,” says Dick Spierenburg, creative director of the imm cologne, on the decision to nominate MUT.

“As a result, they stand for a new generation of design studios that’s

responding to a changed market landscape in which huge demands are made of designers’ adaptability and inventiveness.”

The “Das Haus – Interiors on Stage” installation simulates a residential house at the international furniture and interiors fair imm cologne. The fair constructs an approximately 180-square-metre house in the middle of the Pure Editions area, Hall 3.1, designed according to the plans of a designer who is newly nominated every year. The furniture, colors, materials, lighting and accessories are also selected by the designer, rendering the finished house an individual, integrated configuration of interior design. The project thereby deals not just with contemporary furnishing trends but also with people’s aspirations as well as social change.